Pasadena Summer School Takes in Regional Students

Budget cuts hit summer school programs hard in many Southland communities. For more than 30 years one Pasadena summer school program has weathered the funding roller coaster. KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman-Lopez paid a visit Friday as the month-long program wrapped up for the summer.

The walls of Summer School in the Park are the palm and elm trees at Pasadena’s Central Park. It’s run by Centro de Accion Social, a social service non-profit founded by Chicano activists decades ago. Executive director Randy Jurado Ertll says 160 youngsters - from kindergarten through 12th grade - enrolled this year.

"It is larger and the kids are coming from throughout Pasadena, Altadena but what’s interesting is that it’s more regional this time. We had kids from Los Angeles coming because LAUSD cut a lot of their summer programs."

Kids from Duarte and Baldwin Park are here, too. Pasadena Unified isn’t giving money this year. So Jurado Ertll had to raise the 113-thousand dollars it costs to run the Monday through Friday program.

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On the last day of class, the students show off during a talent show. On stage, one group demonstrates jump rope; a pair of kids drill each other on multiplication tables. And two brothers, six and four years old, practice breakdancing and some freestyle moves.

[Cheers, behind song "Beat It"]

The boys are in Margarita Dominguez’s class. She’s one of six credentialed teachers leading the classes.

"The most important thing is that they practiced the skills that they have mastered throughout the school year. And also being more independent. Like Kailin, normally is quiet and now he’s dancing, now he got more independent through the program."

Her students created a family tree, wrote about field trips and made friends. Thirteen year old Kiran Raina, the show’s master of ceremonies, likes that social and academic mix. It’s his fourth year enrolled in this summer school. With the math help, he says, he can now run circles around radius, pi, and circumference.

"This summer’s been a little harder, it’s been good, I’ve been learning a lot of math that I didn’t learn before. So it’s getting me ready for like, next year. I’m going to a private school so it’s going to help me a lot."

The classes began at 7:30 in the morning and ended at 1:30 in the afternoon. Guest lecturers briefed students about eating healthy and staying away from drugs, alcohol and gangs. 18 year-old Julio Anselmo embraced that lesson before he enrolled in the summer classes. He stands under a palm tree, heels forming a V shape, hands in pockets and talks about growing up in a Tujunga gang. He’s seen several friends killed. On a summer school field trip to Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention group, Anselmo decided to erase some of the marks of his gang life.

"We went and we talked to some lady named Norma and she took me to the tattoo removal. It was free, it hurt. Adolfo: How did it feel after you had them removed? Anselmo: I felt happy that I’m getting them removed. I don’t have to worry about the cops trippin’ on me, they see this and they’re going to think I’m gang affiliated or anything, you know."

Anselmo’s younger brother and sister are enrolled in these classes. He wants to set a good example for them, he says, so he’s starting community college classes in about a month. Most of the other kids resume school then, too. Program director Randy Jurado Ertll says hopes everyone follows Anselmo’s lead - and practice what they learned this summer.